Tape Delay Hold Isn't Infinite

[Bakerman]

just checked it again setting delay time to 2000ms. Hitting a chord and then immediately press 'hold'. But I only hear a very short (staccato like) section of the sound repeated with the hold engaged. Not the long repeat that you would expect. I am doing something wrong? Maybe some modifier or midi settings are wrong (I am using the default modifier settings)? Can someone check this on their machine?

It loops the delay interval ending with when you pressed hold. So if you press it 200 ms later, you'll get 1800 ms of silence then 200 ms of your chord. If you wanted to adjust this you could use modifier damping to delay the hold activation.

 

[Bodde]

Yes that is what I am experiencing. Hard to make interesting hold loops this way with the default settings. Would make more (musical) sense to me if it would hold the notes for the full duration of the delay time (one repeat cycle) not just a very short section of the repeat. I have to experiment with the modifier settings then.

 

[Bakerman]

Instead of a damped modifier another option is just pressing hold later. If you have the delay loud enough to notice the chord struck in the delay signal, that's your clue the buffer is all chord & no silence. (There's still the swell problem though, which I think is a bug.)

 

[Bodde]

Instead of a damped modifier another option is just pressing hold later.

I have tried this before but then your hold repeats will only be softer with less attack. It doesn't really make the hold tones longer. I think the short notes from the hold delay is because it only holds the notes for the moment when you press hold. So it only 'samples' a few Milli seconds. With longer delay times this results in a very short note followed by a pause for as long as you have set the delay time. From what I remember the hold function on other delay pedals like the Boss DD-6 and the Roland SDE 19" delay behaves different and hold the notes longer which makes more sense to me.

Would be nicer if the hold would sample for as long as you press the hold button.

 

[javajunkie]

I actually find this pretty UNrealistic. My point in doing this in the first place comes from that fact that I've been tasked with reproducing sounds off of an artist's record that were created using an Echoplex. The guitarist set the feedback on the Echoplex very high and layered several parts over each other, almost as if it was a looper. This churning loop is the intro of the song, and it comes back in other places.

On the Echoplex, each cycle may degrade slightly, but not enough to mask the rhythmic clarity of the overall loop. With the Axe, the Tape hold 1) don't hold for very long at all, and 2) with the feedback set to 100%, the repeats degrade into a wash of churning harmonics very quickly. That's neat, but it's not what the Echoplex on the album does, and it's not what I'm trying to reproduce. I think Fractal should consider refining this a little bit.

Also, repeat degradation when Hold is engaged happens on every delay block. The Tape block is the only one that seems to get softer, but a held repeat tends to lose its luster after several seconds on all the blocks (even digital). The degradation doesn't sound like it correlates to EQ settings, so this is in line with what Fractal said above regarding loop processing.

I wouldn't use hold for that task but set feedback high and do what the original person did on the album.

 

[Bakerman]

I have tried this before but then your hold repeats will only be softer with less attack. It doesn't really make the hold tones longer. I think the short notes from the hold delay is because it only holds the notes for the moment when you press hold. So it only 'samples' a few Milli seconds.

It doesn't sample only a few ms; it gives a loop of whatever length the delay time is. If you play some kind of lick/scale it's easier to tell.

 

[Bodde]

It doesn't sample only a few ms; it gives a loop of whatever length the delay time is. If you play some kind of lick/scale it's easier to tell.

That is actually not the case with the hold. It only samples a small part of the repeated sound not the whole delay cycle. That is why the pause and the staccato note is created. If you play a longer lick only a very small part is repeated with the hold which is not very useful. At least with the default modifier settings.

EDIT: just tried it again. With the default modifier setting (damping 10ms) the very short sound it created. With damping to the max the sample time is longer. But the maximum damping setting is 1000ms. So when setting the delay time to 2000ms a 1000ms sample is created followed by 1000ms pause.
If someone has other settings where actually the whole repeat is sampled that would be great....

 

[Bakerman]

That is actually not the case with the hold. It only samples a small part of the repeated sound not the whole delay cycle. That is why the pause and the staccato note is created. If you play a longer lick only a very small part is repeated with the hold which is not very useful. At least with the default modifier settings. If someone has other setting where actually the whole repeat is sampled that would be great....

Which mode? Are you still talking about pressing hold immediately after playing the chord? I posted a clip on the previous page where it holds a 2-second series of notes from a synth sequence.

 

[Bodde]

Which mode?

What do mean by mode? I am just simply pressing the hold button right after I play a chord or phrase.

Very curious how you record a 2-second phrase with the hold function/button of the delay. What are your settings?